Album Information

Album Name: Five Idiots 伍條柒

Release Date: 7th April 2026

Album Review

By Denis Tse

A new Cantorap supergroup has arrived, but unlike 90s OGs like Softhard 軟硬天師 and LMF 大懶堂 or recent collectives like The Low Mays and 24Herbs, its members aren’t from Hong Kong. Instead, four of the five members of ‘Five Idiots’ (伍條柒) – SoulHan and the trio Y.H.L – are Guangzhou-based, while the fifth, 揽佬SKAI Isyourgod, hails from Huizhou, where its 6 million residents speak Hakka and Hokkien in addition to Cantonese. 

You may have heard of SKAI, who dethroned Jay Chou with a meteoric rise to become the most popular Mandopop artist on Spotify in July 2025. Blending up Memphis rap, Huizhou swagger and Guangdong culture, SKAI riffed on everything from medical oil and herbal lozenges to power stations and urban villages. However, the other members have been steady contributors to the Cantonese rap scene in their own right. SoulHan has been part of the Guangzhou alternative rap collective 精气神 (Vitality) since 2012 and has a steady stream of hard-hitting Cantorap albums since 2020, while Y.H.L (a trio made of Player J, 阿牛, 步步高先生) released their debut in 2024, also influenced by the gritty, lo-fi instrumentals of Southern hip-hop/trap. 

As a collective, the members’ fondness for darker beats is balanced by their half tongue-in-cheek, half fraternal-themed topics (the group’s name being an example, taking from the 2009 smash hit Indian movie 3 Idiots). 

On the group coming together, SoulHan says that ‘We grew up watching similar things and listening to similar music, and the people in our circles all knew each other… We hit it off right away, had great chemistry, and respected each other’s music, so we thought, “Why don’t we do something together?’ 

Perhaps the most compelling thing about Five Idiots 伍條柒 is how their voices work together. The producer Terrace Martin once compared members of the hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest to different instruments of a jazz quintet – Q-Tip’s warm vocals as saxophone, Phife Dawg as trumpet, and DJ Ali Shaheed Muhammad as the band, laying down the rhythm section. The timbres on ‘Five Idiots’ are notably more diverse – SoulHan’s flow leans serious and proper, setting the tone like an office manager, so I think of him as the drummer. 阿牛 (A Niu) has the deepest voice and carries a quiet passion like the bass. Player J often comes in after SoulHan, with a slurred, high-pitched rasp like an electric guitar; 步步高先生 (BoBoGo) is disarmingly earnest and has a youthful, nasally strain like the trumpet, while SKAI, unhurried and charismatic in his Huizhou-inflected Mandarin, is the saxophone soloist – he has said that his love for Southern hip-hop comes from it being ‘chill’, and that having imitated all the big American rappers, he’s arrived at his natural delivery of yapping rather than yelling. As a whole, the band is always in movement and never bores, with vocalists trading solos of varying intensity and rhythmic timing. When they do join up at the choruses, you find yourself chanting along. 

The group’s refreshing mix of personalities and stories make their debut album a commercial and critical success (shortlisted for the Chinese Music Awards’ top 10 albums of April 2026). There’s a little something for everyone – starting with the formulaic, we hear the rags-to-riches braggadocio of Who Wants to Smoke With Me? and Make RMB, and the frenetic gangsta rap of So What? and Headshot. But there’s also a love of brotherhood, and a mission to carry the torch of Cantonese music, in the two club–friendly singles, Worship Guan Gong and Know the spot. Invoking the military general Guan Yu (celebrated by both police and triads in Southern China as the paragon of righteousness), the chorus of Worship Guan Gong finds the ‘Five Idiots’ rapping earnestly, ‘Brothers seek not to be born on the same date, month or year / Brothers just hope to die on the same day’. On Know the spot, the refrain goes:

‘What’s the move tonight / Hit the club or get a massage? My buddies all got chemistry / No reservations needed, they know the spot’. 

The track is a cheeky, slice-of-life look at ‘Five Idiots’ partying at the club, but there’s also SoulHan proudly affirming, ‘twenty years later, us five guys are the founding fathers of Guangdong hip-hop’. Similarly, in the self-mythologizing opening track, The Birth of 5 Idiots, SoulHan proclaims they will “lead the Cantonese language to a Grammy”.

There are slower tracks on the album that come in the form of introspective rap-ballads Heartknot and Recovery, with wailing electric guitars and stirring lyrics like ‘If you don’t know my past, you have no right to find me guilty.’ On the chipmunk-soul Lisa where the group take turns making romantic confessions, 步步高先生 BoBoGo shyly says, ‘Do you still remember how we met? You didn’t know me, but I admired you. I never thought BoBoGo would crumble so easily.’ (你仲记唔记得我 系点识你 / 你唔识我 我赏识你 / 估唔到 步步高会不堪一击) There’s a pun on admire (‘赏识’), which can double as ‘want to know,’ and ‘crumble easily’ is a fun use of an idiom/chengyu (‘不堪一击’), all of which make the lyrical flow particularly smooth and playful, in a way that I haven’t heard before from Cantonese rap. 

The sparse production on the album plays a big part in opening up space for the performers to rap-sing in the notoriously challenging language which is Cantonese (six to nine tones compared to Mandarin’s four); while still being interesting and energetic enough to carry the songs. Hip-hop as a genre is known for being bottom-end heavy; freed from mid-range frequency instruments like piano, guitar, and strings,  the various rappers’ wildly different timbres and vocal stylings showcase the Cantonese language in full melodic glory.

The diversity of genres and textures on the album is dizzying at times; it also speaks to the ambition and ability of the collective to forge a new path for Cantorap. SoulHan notes that compared to the previous generation, ‘Cantonese rap isn’t doing so well these days, much less people are rapping in Cantonese… It’s not just Hong Kong, Shenzhen or Guangzhou, we want to create something that represents the entire Guangdong region and its culture. Compared to rappers from southwest [China], we might not get as much attention, maybe we aren’t as aggressive, but we still hope to bring our music to the masses.’ Beyond just rap, the overall Cantonese music scene has been an underdog since the 90s, so it’s heartening to see Five Idiots break through with style and intention. 

Told through emphatic Cantonese rapping, subtle word play, and melodic flows over smart production, the album is a cohesive statement that heralds the arrival of Five Idiots, and a renaissance in Cantonese hip-hop. I’m excited for what comes next, and to see the ‘Five Idiots’ at the Grammys one day.

Rating: 4/5

Album Track List

1. 字头的诞生 The Birth of 5 Idiots

2. 拜关二哥 Worship Guan Gong

3. 谁想同我抽烟 Who Wants to Smoke with Me?

4. 爆头 Headshot

5. 嗨佬喺边？Where’s ya At My Highlo – Skit

6. 都知订 Know the spot

7. 支付宝 Make RMB

8. 弥补 Recovery

9. 抽水佬 Leech

10. 系啊，咁又点啫？So What?

11. LISA

12. 心结 Heart Knot